A reversed-polarity sunspot was detected today, marking solar minimum and the beginning of the 24th solar cycle (since humans first recorded the undulating pattern of solar intensity nearly 400 years ago).
Solar cycles appear to last on average about 11 years, taking a few years to rise and fall between the peaks and troughs of solar activity. The next solar maximum is expected around 2011 or 2012, just in time for the beginning of the 14th b’ak’tun cycle, as measured by the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar. To add to the synchronicity, David Hathaway (and colleagues) of the Marshall Space Flight Center are predicting this upcoming cycle will be one of the most intense ever measured.
ARTICLE ["Sunspot is Harbinger of New Solar Cycle (...)"]
LINK/IMAGES [solar cycle 24 prediction]
ARTICLE ["Scientists Predict Big Solar Cycle"]
IMAGE [graph of sunspot activity since 1870]
ARTICLE [solar cycle]
I’m currently sorting through gigabytes of solar satellite footage — sunspots, flares and filaments — with the hopes of rigging up a sort of VJ tool and audio visualizer using video of the sun. I should have a preliminary version ready for this year’s Southeast US regional Burn, Transformus. I posted a very short rendering test a ways back, and am posting now my proposal for an art grant I was awarded just last week, which briefly outlines my ideas for the project.
VIDEO [rendering test using lunar transit footage]
LINK [grant proposal, "Flirting with Blindness"]
Most of my video so far has come from the STEREO and TRACE archives — if anyone knows any other good sources I’m all eyes, and would be more than grateful.
This entry was cross-posted at Space Collective.
Previously: Flirting with Blindness Redux, First 3D Images from STEREO
The Conversation {3 comments}
To put the whole Climate Change issue into perspective vis-a-vis the Peak Oil Crisis, everyone needs to ask themselves, their associates, all sitting elected officials and those seeking office, especially the office of President of the United States, “What is more threatening in both the long and short terms, a beneficial 1 degree F rise in average world temperatures over the past 100 years, or a 1 percent decline in world oil production over the last 100 weeks - with steepening declines forecast? Can our economy better deal with declining fuel inventories in an environment of persistent warming, or in an environment of declining average temperatures over the next several decades, which is the most likely climate change scenario forecast by the highly reliable solar inertial motion (SIM) model?” The progress of solar cycle #24 provides manifest proof for their answers.
Aren’t you speaking to global warming, which is only one aspect of Climate Change, albeit one that has an affect on several different factors which in turn affect other factors. It’s not the “warmth” itself that is projected to cause the greater problems. The rise in temperature is merely the cause (Global Warming) of the effect (Climate Change)
…If other planets in our solar systems are showing signs of warming, isn’t that suggestive that forces other than those that are man made are impoicated in current trends?
One more point… It seems like the many other ways we are trashing the planet in and of themselves (whether related to warming directly or not)need to be addressed in a serious manner as well. I have little doubt the world will be quite different in 50 years if major change (whether by humans, or by Gaia evening the score with “sudden change.” World wide drought, environmental toxins, sinking earth, and lack of it (soil), oceanic problems/fishing overkills. We could solve the warming aspect, and still do ourselves in quite quickly if all else was ignored environmentally. (yeah, I’m a little bit of a Lovelock fan)
Thanks for any comments…
Let’s just be patient. [A little] time will tell the story.
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